Advisory: Armenia will not observe daylight saving time in 2012

We now have confirmed reports that similar to the move in Russia, that Armenia, Belarus and Ukraine won't fall back but also stay permanently on summer time on October 30. (There have been some initial rumours about other countries following Russia’s lead and considering cancelling Daylight saving time too. We will also provide details on these changes as they come up and are ratified and enacted into law.)

In an attempt to improve the country’s economy, the government of Armenia has cancelled Daylight Saving Time. This will result in the country staying on permanent ‘winter time’ and not moving an hour ahead on Sunday, March 25th 2012.

Since the new date published by the government is different from what was defined in the previous years, Windows-based computers will not correctly interpret the time after March 25th 2012.

Microsoft will not be issuing an update for Windows at this time to address this change. The recommendation is to move to an alternate time zone: Russian Standard Time [DisplayName: “(UTC+04:00) Moscow, St. Petersburg, Volgograd” ]

The time zone Caucasus Standard Time [DisplayName: “(UTC+04:00) Yerevan”] will be updated in the next cycle of cumulative time zone update for Windows (next planned is August 2012).

Essentially the recommendation is that customers in Armenia to move to an alternate time zone: one alternate time zone recommendation is “Russian Standard Time” DisplayName: (UTC +4:00) Moscow, St Petersburg, Volgograd) in Windows.

We don't plan to issue a hotfix or update at this time for Windows, but plan to include and revise the native time zone for Armenia in the next release of Windows cumulative time zone updates, planned for August 2012.

We'll continue to watch the developments and changes around the world. As noted previously, we do provide some guidance on http://www.microsoft.com/time, that in order to achieve more seamless transitions to new DST and time zones policies, Microsoft requests that governments provide the following:

Ample advance notice (1 year or more) of the planned change.

Official published confirmation of planned changes to DST or time zones.

Concentrated efforts on promoting the change to the affected citizens.